We advocate on all animal protection and exploitation issues, including experimentation, factory farming, rodeos, breeders and traveling animal acts.

Animal Defenders of Westchester
P.O. Box 205
Yonkers, NY 10704

Articles

Don't use geese to fill up the food bank

Letter to the editor
from Kiley Blakman

Published in Lohud.comAugust 8, 2013

We ask the Westchester Food Bank to stop accepting questionable USDA
“donations” of slaughtered geese and their babies.

The flesh of these birds is a morass of jet fuel, pesticides, mercury
and lead from roadways, carbon monoxide from traffic along parkways, and
carbon dioxide gas which is used to kill them. They drink from Long
Island Sound, which just reported yet another sewage leak. Jean
Grassman, professor of nutrition sciences at Brooklyn College, cites PCB
contamination of goose meat, which is a developmental toxin, stating
“PCB levels are higher in aquatic systems, i.e. environments frequented
by waterfowl like geese.”

This toxic flesh poses such an incalculable health risk that it comes
with a large “warning label” attached to it, cautioning poor people to
eat it no more than once a month. Even the Bronx Zoo won’t accept this
tainted flesh as animal feed.

Is it OK to serve poor people just a little poison? Fr. John R.
Sheehan, of the Xavier Society for the Blind, said it best: “I am
horrified at the lack of common sense we human beings sometimes
demonstrate. The latest is to ‘control’ geese in public areas by killing
them. These poor birds, in addition to being driven from their natural
habitats and flight paths, are now systematically being killed, then
they’re fed to the poor. So meat from animals exposed to noxious
chemicals and poisons is given to people who are homeless and in serious
trouble. This is not a complicated issue. It needs to be halted.”

Kiley Blackman TuckahoeThe writer is founder of
Westchester4Geese

WESTCHESTER4GEESE is an adjunct of ANIMAL DEFENDERS OF WESTCHESTER.
We advocate against all forms of animal abuse and exploitation,
including hunting, experimentation, fur, circuses and rodeos
www.adow.orgFacebook.com/westchester4geese

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